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The OPITE (Open Practice in International Teacher Education) project is part of the work of the UK Open Educational Resources programme run by the Higher Education Academy. The aim of this strand is to work with UK Higher Education institutions to devise strategies and policies to promote their work at institution level, through their Open Educational Resources (OER), to an international audience. One of the key objectives is to benchmark good practices in OER transferability across borders and explore practitioners’ experiences of using open educational resources internationally. OPITE builds on the “Digital Futures in Teacher Education” (DeFT) project whose aim was to develop guidance on digital literacy practice and the use of Open Educational Resources in teaching and learning. Sheffield Hallam University is the lead institution and we are working with three partners – colleagues based at the [Ed+ict] research unit at KHLiM (Katholieke Hogeschool Limburg – Limburg Catholic University College, Belgium); colleagues from the Centre for E-learning at AGH (Akademia Gorniczo-Hutnicza – University of Science and Technology, Poland) and from HAN (Hogeschool van Arhnhem en Nijmegen – HAN University of Applied Sciences).

We spent most of October and November talking to our colleagues to establish the principles for our collaboration and to decide the direction the project should take – we have decided to take the Open Textbook developed in the context of the DeFT project as our starting point and on that basis explore issues involved in re-using OERs in international contexts, to take a closer look at open textbooks and finally to look at barriers and enablers for embedding OERs within and between our institutions. We were lucky to receive some additional funding to be able to supplement the online conversations with some decent face time – and this is how we all ended up in the very cold but very beautiful town of Krakow for three days at the OPITE workshop.

Let’s talk about the Open Textbook

We’re using the workshop to show and share the tools developed as part of the DeFT project, talk about the main barriers and enablers to use and reuse of OERs including open textbooks as well as to reveal the hopes and wishes for open textbooks in partners’ contexts. Our colleagues from AGH were kind enough to offer to be our hosts and have surpassed all expectations; they even got us snow!

Keeping warm at the workshop venue

At this moment in time, we are at the halfway point in the workshop, with the group busily working on their contributions to the case study which will be developed at the end of the project so watch this space for insights on transferability of OER frameworks, issues around context, localisation (and maybe a postcard or two…).

It is in the last few weeks of the DEFT project that our thoughts have been turning to the important task of creating and releasing our Open Textbook to the world. These are the difficult times when all of the work as a team comes together. Looking back over the postings in this blog you can see how individuals are making sense of Digital Literacy, addressing important issues that impact upon them and their understandings of the world. I include here the teachers involved in our projects and their case studies (see Project Website – currently at digitalfutures.org – note: this soon will be making space for the Open Textbook itself on 1st November). These thoughts have been informed by the wonderful conference and the excellent and well-received keynotes by Doug Belshaw and Bob Harrison. Some of these notions of Digital Literacy are not always easy to articulate and are sometimes less about what people actually say and more about the, often tacit, systems of meanings that underlie them. These many voices are at varying volume and timbre, some rehearsed, others underperformed. Making a response is important and needs to be taken in the spirit in which it is offered: i.e. open to debate. However, the nature of projects is that they require outcomes and products and hence our busy-ness making all of this make sense, and we thank our readers in bearing with us while this emerges.

Was it just me who flinched when Doug was talking about how to explain digital technologies in a way that was simple enough even for his old mum to understand? We were invited to have a good laugh at the image of this simple woman coming to grips with modern technology.

“There but for the grace of god (and Anna) go I,” I thought. With their help I am now slightly more digitally literate than I was at the start of this project, but am probably the same age and definitely the same gender as Doug’s mother. I could not succeed in ‘othering’ (see Fine ) myself completely from her and did not like this stereotype. As it was repeated, I became more ill at ease.

I think that the statement made me feel uncomfortable because it reveals a particular attitude to women and age.

Firstly, why was his mother– not his father or even his son used as an example of digital incompetence? I know many men who are self-confessed digital illiterates- so they do exist. Even if his mother was the least digitally competent person in the family,(and to be fair, it is widely accepted that men do spend more time on computers than women) is he right to imply that she is intellectually challenged? Is he subscribing to the trope that women have an inferior intelligence, especially in the male dominated realm of digital technologies? And how far does this belief in intellectual inferiority extend?

Secondly, does age predefine levels of skill and interest in technology? Are we to believe that older generations have no proficiencies in this area? If Doug had looked around he might have noticed quite a few veteran experts in the field, and that one very eminent professor had just become a Grandmother.

Jokes on age and gender- not a very good cocktail to present to an academic audience- I was not the only one who was- shaken not stirred- by the performance. In fact if Doug’s mother was there she might have made him sit in the naughty chair.

On Tuesday, we hosted a regional conference to celebrate and disseminate the achievements of the Digital Futures in Teacher Education project. The conference started with an introduction from Richard Pountney, our project lead and Anna Gruszczynska our project manager. Then Julia Davies and Cathy Burnett set the scene by outlining the themes that emerged from the project. Parallel sessions of Case studies were presented in four themes. The presentations are hyperlinked to the presenters, but you can see their case studies written up on our Digital Futures website.

It was a great success. The conference centre was filled with over 80 delegates (some from as far away as Japan) who shared an interest in digital technologies and education. They came from a wide range of backgrounds- from the students that Sarah Butler brought along- to a researcher of educational buildings; from a retired SEN teacher to a teacher educator from Lincoln. Our DeFT teachers and tutors, confident and inspirational, succeeded in motivating them all by sharing their creativity and technological know how.

Everyone was interested in the same story- the development of digital technologies, the exploration of digital literacies and ways of promoting new and exciting ways of learning. In the words of Bob Harrison this was a “timely” and “genuinely important project”, because “there are massive changes taking place in education at the moments, and the use and impact of technology on learning is really really important”. Now we need some sort of transformation in the way we educate our children. We need to “educate the educators- or else our young will be left behind”. Keith Hemsley, who has spread the gospel about the benefits of using informational technologies in schools for the past thirty years, said that he enjoyed listening to the teachers: “I thought I would have heard it all before,” he said, “but it’s a different approach!”

Delegates were impressed with how the case studies showcased a wide range of involvements with digital technologies. Several people I talked to were impressed by the scope: “we can take these ideas away, and build on them…” said one teacher educator. A few were amazed at the dexterity of the tiniest of our participants. One delegate, after seeing the Sharrow Nursery project said, ” I have learnt a lot, I am surprised that very small children can use these tools, a video camera, they made video clips, it’s so amazing! Yes I saw a new world! ” Many more people spoke of how they were really inspired by the case study presentations.

I spoke to Doug Belshaw who said he was pleasantly surprised by the determination and imagination that the teachers demonstrated: “I was expecting them to say ‘well we were trying to do some stuff, but we were hamstrung by e-safety issues,’ but they found ways round this and did stuff, I would quite happily have my five year old son in that kind of class.”

For other blogs on the conference see Guy Merchant‘s , where you can see Jack Todhunter’s film of the event, and Doug Belshaw’s blog, where he posts the prezi he used for his keynote speech. Leicester City Council have blogged about Lucy Atkins’s impressions of the day

The conference was a brilliant showcase of all the effort that the project members have been working towards over the past year. We have come so far… it seems so long ago that everyone met together at the start of the project. As Sue Bamford said in her feedback sheet, “Lovely to see the outcomes of this project- having been at one of the first meetings where everyone was putting forward their first ideas about what they might do.”

I have not had all the feedback sheets back yet, but so far the message is clear: it has been a truly wonderful event ….

here are just some of the comments:

“very thought provoking… positive promotion of using digital technology in the classroom by inspirational teachers”

“getting to grips with software. very interesting and useful”

“the themes intro was brilliant at putting the sessions into context”

“A very valuable experience overall. I have been introduced to many new ideas and issues to think about, which I plan to share with my fellow PGCE primary students”

“great ideas for primary- inspiring, thank you”

“I really enjoyed this event, I was stimulated. UK is challenging to introduce ICT into schools. That is amazing. All presenters were excellent. Japanese should have a sense of humour like British.”

“Excellent opportunity to learn from others and contribute to that learning … privilege to meet so many creative and daring people who are making a difference.”

“constant frustrations with tech. but seen huge passion and enthusiasm with great examples of innovation in learning and teaching”

“events like this help to provide the most valuable CPD – learning from each other’s, sharing innovative work, how social media is a forum for sharing.”

“Margie even wrote about it that night in her diary. On the page headed May 17, 2155, she wrote, ‘Today Tommy found a real book!’

These are the opening words of an Isaac Asimov short story called ‘The Fun They Had‘. It’s about how children of the future find an old book and what they think about it. The story was written in 1951 and Asimov sets the story 200 years later.

‘They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly, and it was awfully funny to read words that stood still instead of moving, like they were supposed to – on a screen, you know. And then when they turned back to the page before, it had the same words on it that they had had when they read it the first time.’

I was reminded of this story at the DeFT Conference at Sheffield United Football Ground on Tuesday 2nd October 2012. We were talking about Digital Futures for Teacher Education and I was thinking about how in the story the teachers were robots. We talked about this in relation to language teaching and how sophisticated digital translators were becoming. ‘Not good enough yet‘ said one person ‘But maybe one day they will be‘ said another. ‘Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer, ought to be” said Bob Harrison, quoting Arthur C Clarke, and echoing Sugata Mitra on ‘Child driven education‘. I wanted to know what happens to the curriculum when knowledge becomes redundant – like Latin, perhaps. ICT as a subject in schools has become like Latin – difficult to learn, unpopular and without a real purpose in the world. But programming is the ‘new Latin’ says the government: notable here not because it has any real purpose for learning but because it differentiates – those who can from those who can’t. Bene diagnoscitur, bene curatur as someone’s old Etonian Latin master used to say. Which reminds me of a very old Spike Milligan joke about eating old sausages. That is perhaps why the consultation on new programmes of study for ICT have been given to the BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, and the Royal Academy for Engineering to lead and advise. We were not mindful of this at all at the conference where teachers shared their stories and digital practices. We were too busy thinking, perhaps like Margie in the story:

“Margie was thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old days. She was thinking about the fun they had”

This week we are collecting together all out resources to complete the final report for the project and in doing so we realise just how much has happened over the year…

10 presentations,(you can see the powerpoints on slideshare) three teacher meetings (and another one next week), four core team meetings, and the Digital Bloom installation in the Sheffield winter gardens, not to mention all the events that the teachers have or are arranging with their schools.

We are looking at the reflections of the project participants, and although they have not all come in yet, it is evident that the project has had a considerable impact on many people.

For me it has opened my eyes to the fact that there are many facets of digital literacy, and it is quite extraordinary how the teachers and students in the project have been able to spot and take advantage of the facets of digital technology that will enhance their teaching. I realise now that although I have certainly expanded my own knowledge of the uses of technology, I am aware that there are many more areas of which are still quite alien to me, and that achieving ‘digital literacy’ is somewhat akin to reaching the end (or beginning) of the rainbow.

There is a part in the final report that asks

How has the wider community benefitted from your project?

We know that the schools have reached out to their local communities by involving parents, museums and local parks with their projects. We know from our conversations with the public during the ‘digital bloom’ installation in the Sheffield winter gardens, that people are interested and keen to support digital technologies in schools. We know from the conferences we attended that there is an awareness of the issues that this project addresses, and a curiosity and appreciation of how the participants have engaged with them.

However we do not know what impact this project has on the even wider community- the readers of this blog…I wonder what people in Australia, Guatemala, India and South Africa think of our project.

The DeFT project is hosting a Regional Conference on 2nd October at the Sheffield United Football Ground, 9.30 – 15.30. The keynote speakers will be Doug Belshaw and Bob Harrison. DeFT academics from both Sheffield Universities will be there to present the project, together with the teachers and tutors who took part. Teachers from ten schools from in and around the Sheffield and Rotherham area will be presenting case studies which contain information which would prove useful to teachers at all levels of education. Five case studies are from secondary schools, including one school that caters for children with special needs and five are from first and middle schools, one of which has a nursery attached. It promises to be an extremely interesting and informative conference. This event is now full: to check if there are any places available owing to cancellation email a.gruszczynska@shu.ac.uk